


Good Cop, Bad Cop.

by ameliaspunkcomplex



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mentions of torture/violence, NYPD!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 11:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1939968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliaspunkcomplex/pseuds/ameliaspunkcomplex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter are partner detectives who get pulled out to question more… difficult suspects. The D.E.A doesn’t care what they do as long as they get information, but Detective Lecter will tell you that he’s never laid a finger on a suspect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Cop, Bad Cop.

He’s the kind of petty criminal who rummages through the sewers of the city like a rat, a man who knows the insides of the county jail like the back of his hand. Hell, he probably has a bunk on reserve. His profile is run-of-the-mill, scum of the earth stuff; armed robbery, possession, trafficking, aggravated assault, the works. This time, he’s been pulled up on another possession charge- it’s a few grams of horse, strictly personal, but the DEA think he’s part of something bigger, so right now he’s sitting in the interrogation room, chained to the table, etching something into the wood which, through the tiny slit in the door and with only the dim, dust-illuminating light of the damp little cube, Will Graham thinks is some sort of white supremacist symbol.

_Oh,_ he thinks, _Lecter’s going to love him_.

When the two of them get pulled out on an off shift, he knows there’s more at stake than they’re being told. And looking around the station – it’s practically destitute, aside from the petite girl at the desk typing quietly – it’s obvious that there’s some sort of unspoken permission here. The silence has a voice, and it whispers, _you are free to do what you want to him, to that scum in the cell; just make sure he talks._

And who says that the NYPD are corrupt?

He steps away from the door and raises the takeaway coffee to his lips just as he hears the front doors swing open, and _swoosh_ shut behind Hannibal Lecter. As usual, he’s dressed insensibly, a three-piece suit ensemble that looks better suited for a fine dinner than a standard interrogation, but Will does nothing more than perk an eyebrow as he sips his cheap flat white.

“Good morning detective,” Lecter says cordially, smoothing non-existent creases from his coat.

“Detective,” Will replies.

Hannibal glances around the station, quietly noting what Will suspects he did earlier, and nods once to himself subtly.

“I see we have been left alone today,” he observes, and then with the tug of a smirk at the corner of his lip, “How kind. Although I do wonder what it is they think we do to these people.”

Will burns his tongue on the coffee and it scolds his throat on the way down, too, but he’s grateful for the hit of caffeine. He swallows, and shrugs, jerking his head in the direction of the door.

“So you got the memo?”

“Indeed. It was rather uninteresting.”

“Agreed. And by the looks of his record, the perp won’t exactly be enlightening. So shall we make this quick and call it a day?”

Lecter smiles softly, tugging off his gloves and pushing them neatly into his breast pocket. “An excellent idea,” he says, “perhaps afterwards, I’ll buy you a real coffee. That corner store stuff is abhorrent.”

“It’s cold, and I’m tired,” Will retorts, “Would a twenty dollar espresso wake me up any quicker?”

“Perhaps faster than I can awaken a sense of refinement within you.”

Will scoffs, although he thinks he sees the twinkling edge of laughter, like a knife’s egde, in Lecter’s deadpan expression. “Exellent. While I await your enlightening catharsis, shall we do our job?”

Lecter casts a look of mild disgust towards the door, but strides forward nonetheless. “Let’s.”

The cell is awash with the kind of grey sunlight you only see in winter; the air is made cool and sharp by the cold concrete floor and walls; the only light is a naked bulb which dangles precariously from the ceiling. All in all, it’s shabby, but then again: the purpose wasn’t to comfort the perp.

“Good morning, Mister Lambert,” Hannibal says. He prowls the outskirts of the small room as Will pulls up a chair- examining the cracks in the concrete wall as if they were fine art. “Can I get you a glass of water? You must be parched from all the spitting at the officers who detained you.”

The man – Chris Lambert – sneers, but doesn’t say much else. Hannibal turns to meet the criminal’s ridiculous, posturing gaze, and drops it immediately. Lambert thinks he’s won the stare-out. Will can’t help but smirk to himself.

“No refreshment then. We might as well begin.”

Will jumps into action, scraping his chair closer to the table and leaning forwards and catching the man’s gaze. “Chris, let me make this simple. I don’t get a paycheck until you talk, and considering that I don’t get paid _nearly_ enough to talk to you bacterium as it is, I’m more than willing to sit in this room until either you give me some information, or you starve out and I use your _corpse_ like a _ventriloquist_ _dummy_ to tell the DEA something they’ll bite. The choice is yours.”

He sits back in his chair, folds his arms across his chest, and waits.

Chris scoffs again- it’s not an attractive sound. Every noise he makes is coated in phlegm, the harmony of a veteran chain-smoker.

“You fuckin’ serious? He spits. “Good cop, bad cop? I ain’t seen that shit since my juvie days. So what, the German offers me _refreshments_ and you sit there makin’ threats?” He laughs an ugly laughs, an unintelligent laugh. “Jesus, they still use dial-up here too? Get a new routine, shithead.”

At the crass prose flowing from the criminal’s mouth, Will can almost _feel_ Lecter’s disgruntled pout, but otherwise the man standing behind him doesn’t make a sound.

“Detective Lecter is Lithuanian,” he corrects Chris evenly, “And you might be onto something, but I think you have your roles mixed up Lambert. You see, I’m the good cop.”

“You? You look like you’re still getting dunked in toilets, faggot. Nah, I ain’t afraid a’ either of ya. Bunch of fuckin’ pussies they callin’ cops these days.” Chris sits back in his chair, legs splayed crudely, swastika-covered fists resting on the table’s edge, chain pulled taut.

Will shrugs. “I don’t really care whether or not you think you understand the formula of this interrogation, Lambert. It doesn’t make a difference. Are you going to give me something?”

Chris, in all his beauty and finesse, hacks up a glob of phlegm and spits it onto the table, not far from Will’s hands which recoil quickly. “Shove it up your ass,” he mutters.

“Charming.”

Before Will can speak again, the third voice, until this point forgotten, having melted into the cement, speaks up.

“Mister Lambert, manners will get you everywhere in life,” Lecter says, casting a glance towards Chris’s artwork on the table, “I suggest that you acquire some.”

The man chained to the table, despite all his seeming knowledge of the routine, hasn’t caught on yet, and sneers up at Detective Lecter. He punctuates his next words with a small snarl and a balled fist against the metal tabletop-

“Fuck you.”

Will Graham’s smirk flourishes this time, which seems to unsettle Chris- Chris, who while casting a confused glance towards Will’s smile, misses the crevasse, deep, cave-mouth black and rocky, which opens wide down the middle of Lecter’s face. It’s closed almost as soon as it appears, but to the trained eye, his composed demeanor shatters for a second- and Chris is about to walk bare-footed into the shards.

From under his glasses, Will fixes Chris a steely glare, although it’s almost tinged with sympathy-

“Detective Lecter finds rudeness rather… banal,” he explains, as behind him Lecter leaves his study of the wall and stands behind Chris. “I wouldn’t have said that if I were you.”

Chris tries to face Lecter, but the chains around his wrists stop him from turning far enough. It’s something Lecter clearly took into consideration when he chose his position.

“Fuck you man,” Chris mutters, conviction ebbing from his tone with each second that passes through the thick air like a dagger. “You don’t scare me. I ain’t talkin’.”

He says this all to Will, with an unspoken question mark dangling at the end of his sentence. Will simply shrugs and looks at Hannibal, giving him the floor. He thinks, not for the first time, that if he asked Chris right now what had changed, he wouldn’t have been able to say. Detective Lecter has a way of centring gravity around himself in such a humble yet astute manner, and that sort of power is terrifying. However, the men they deal with rarely possess the poetic finesse to describe such an aural shift in tension, and subsequently find themselves simply and unexplicably, terrified.

Chris looks afraid, which is almost laughable, considering Lecter hasn’t even spoken yet. Can he feel the detective’s breath on his neck? Does he wonder, in that moment, how a bloodied lamb feels when a lion catches scent of the scarlet sweetness? Will resigns to watching.

Brushing a fleck of dust from his cuff, Lecter says, “Allow me, Chris, to approach this from a psychological point of view?”

“What the fuck?” Chris is breaking his neck trying to make Lecter’s gaze, but the chains anchor him painfully out of reach.

“There is a reason you don’t respond to my partner’s threats,” he continues patiently, casting a small nod towards Will, “and that is not because you don’t believe him. I believe you sense that he is a man of his word, and your assessment of his threats as empty are merely a symptom of… bravado. So you believe he would inflict pain upon you, but that doesn’t scare you. Why?”

Chris chews on the inside of his lip, scowling, glaring at Will from under his heavy, furrowed brow. Will’s gaze brushes right above and through him.

“I believe your problem is that you are too far removed from pain.”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“I mean that in your familiarity with pain, it has lost all meaning.” Lecter steps to the side, still out of Chris’ line of vision, but hovering just over his shoulder. “You see all sorts of horrors every day; drive-by shootings, people stabbed to death, robberies and rapes. I’m sure you’ve taken part in a few of these barbaric acts yourself- is that correct?”

Chris’ silence speaks crisply- much louder than his bravado.

“It is in the air you breathe, Chris. Do we count our breaths, feel how they ghost over our lips? No, we take them for granted. They are so familiar to us, that they have no meaning. And such is your relationship with pain.”

Pausing, Lecter looks over Chris’ inked skin with faintly unamused, pursed lips, seeming to pause on a tattoo just under his ear.

“What would give pain meaning to you, Chris?”

Chris shifts uncomfortable. “Fuck you,” he murmurs.

“We must ask ourselves: what has meaning for you? Surely Emily means something to you.”

“Fuck. _You._ ”

The ghost of a smirk on the detective’s thin lips make Will’s blood run cold, and he knows the man. He almost feels sympathetic.

“You are cooperating wonderfully. I feel we are making progress,” Lecter praises, now standing completely still, arms folded behind his back. He begins to pace in small, hushed steps. “Emily is an important part in your healing. Does the image of her flayed and screaming bring meaning to pain?”

Chris blanches. “You’re bluffing.”

Lecter smiles, almost comforting. “This is still an exercise, Chris. Tell me, would Emily scream? Or would she simply cry, as children do? Red-raw and bloody, would she call out for her papa? Or would she call for somebody else? You know her better than I do, after all.”

“You wouldn’t touch a kid,” Chris whispers hoarsely.

“Of course not. I would never involve myself in something so crude. But of the many men who have sat in that chair before you – the same breed of vermin, but more powerful, many of whom have avoided lengthy prison sentences due to my gratuitous negotiations – who would I be to deny them a short relapse from their good behaviour? You deal with criminals, Chris. Tell me, would many of them be hard done by to strip the skin from your beautiful young girl? Perhaps even take a piece of her for themselves first? I doubt they would even need incentive. They may wish simply to aid your emotional recovery. We will reconnect you with your fear yet.”

For a terse minute or two, when Hannibal stops pacing to absentmindedly swipe dirt from under his nail – still with the same cool nature about him – Will thought the perp was going to piss himself, right there, in the interrogation chair. It wasn’t just what Lecter said; Will had seen the tattoo earlier, had considered, and could have made, all the same threats, but they wouldn’t have left the same bruise, which was deep purple-blue and stretching across Lambert like ivy tendrils between old brickwork. There was just something inherently dominant about Lecter, and these men felt it. In the eyes of a true apex predator, their years of crime and petty posturing blanched in comparison. They may as well have been children playing house. It was like an Ikea lamp sitting next to the sun: incomparable.

Will Graham didn’t really give a shit. He just wanted his paycheck, and didn’t care how many guys defecated in their pants – and how much of a genuine kick Lecter seemingly got out of it – as long as there was enough cash in his pocket at the end of the week. He was happily to be intelligently wary of Lecter, but aside from a survivalist fear, enjoyed his company and the ease he brought to jobs. While the perp turned from white to green and back again, Will was already musing over whether to take Lecter up on his offer of espresso – he was craving a second coffee already.

An age seemed to pass before Lambert spoke up again, voice cracked slightly. “I don’t know shit, man.”

Lecter shrugged. “I have been told that when set alight, a victim only feels pain for a short period of time. After that, the only sensations they have are the sound and smell of their own burning flesh. Is this image of Emily more bearable, or more grotesque? I always find the answer insightful. Take your time.”

“She’s only a kid, man. You wouldn’t do that shit to a kid.”

Hannibal left Chris’ back and finally stepped into his line of vision; although the man, before eager to meet his gaze, now recoiled. The parallel between predator and injured prey was nothing tenuous.

“Mister Lambert, the DEA has been working very hard on this case for some months now. The men running this business, as I’m sure you are aware, have hurt many, many innocent people. From a utilitarian point of view, I am morally satisfied in balancing the life of one child against a hundred other innocents. And the DEA, who are being quietly allowed to keep you here as long as they wish, are similarly eager to turn a blind eye to anything tying members of their investigative unit to unkind actions. But all I can ask you to have towards my sincerity is faith. Do you believe I am sincere, Christopher?”

Chris looked at Will worriedly, who in turn looked pointedly towards the portable camcorder, which was currently on standby, but ready to be run for a recorded confession when it was needed.

Lambert swallowed thickly.

“I’ll tell you what I know, but it ain’t much.”

And just like that, the air seemed to thin again. Despite his familiarity with the scene, Will was suddenly aware that he had forgotten to exhale for quite some seconds. He did so promptly, rising from his chair to turn on the camcorder while Lecter dissolved back into the shadows to resume his study of the concrete. The single, naked bulb swung in non-existent wind, casting the cell in yellowed, flickering light.

“Please state your name and address for the camera.”

 ***

“Did you really need to break out the big guns for that guy?” Will asked, wrapping his thick scarf around his neck and buttoning his coat up tight. When they were both dressed for the weather, the left the station into the biting winter air.

“He was little-league, Hannibal,” he continued, “a few hours in the chair would’ve cracked him.”

Lecter shrugged, eyes smiling softly, as he looped his own scarf once more around his neck. “You said yourself that you wanted this job finished quickly. Did I step out of line?”

“In the eyes of the law?”

“In your eyes, Will.”

Will Graham gave it a moment’s thought, before replying, “No. But it was cruel.”

“They are just words, Will.”

_Just words,_ echoed his mind’s voice. “They were cruel words. But effective. Now can I take you up on your offer of _real_ coffee before my skin turns to dry ice?”

Of his many smiles, this one seemed the most sincere.

“It would be my pleasure.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was a prompt filled for user pathonous on tumblr. I always love receiving prompts; send them to me on my personal tumblr (clitorisvevo) or my gmail (ameliab193@gmail.com). Enjoy!


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